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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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I do like the aspects/stunts thing.

No idea how the DF variant works, but based on a skim of the web page, let's try making Hazou! For the purposes of this exercise, I'm saying that each element as well as Sealing, Genjutsu, Medical ninjutsu, and neutral ninjutsu is it's own skill. Fight is taijutsu/close weapons. Shoot is ranged weapons. You have to know a jutsu to be able to use it, but all your jutsu of the same type will use that element's skill bonus.

Aspects
  • [UPLIFT] Hazou wants to make the world a safer and more comfortable place for humanity.
  • [I NOW DECLARE YOU MOUTH AND FOOT] Hazou has a tendency to speak before thinking.
  • [BEEN THERE, KILLED THAT] Hazou has been living in the wilderness for two years, and has experience with survivalism.
  • [I AM BECOME DEATH] Hazou has a... thing... with inventing weapons of mass destruction.
  • [FLIP IT UPSIDE DOWN] Hazou has a creative mindset that lets him see novel uses for things.
  • [LIST FOUR, PAGE ELEVEN] Hazou creates lists in a manner that sometimes strays into mental illness.
  • [KAGOME'S PRODIGY] Hazou has been trained in sealcrafting, and is described as "freakishly good" at it. Due to the uniqueness of his teacher, his approach is rather more cautious than most.
  • [THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN] After sinking a boatload of civilians, Hazou is sickened by the thought of killing more, or allowing more to die via inaction.
Stunts
  • {ROKI} If Hazou has a higher Deceive bonus than his opponent's Empathy bonus, add +2 to Fight.
  • {IMPASSIONED SPEECH} Add +2 to Rapport when delivering a speech.
  • {SEAL DOWNLOAD} Add +2 to Sealing when reverse engineering a seal.
Skills
Great:
  • Sealing
Good:
  • Deceive
  • Fight
Fair:
  • Earth Ninjutsu
  • Will
  • Empathy
Average:
  • Neutral Ninjutsu
  • Craft
  • Rapport
  • Lore
 
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ClawClawBite said:
When I have free time, possible tonight, I want to build a test generic ninja in Hero System/Champions and see what I can get to work. The house rule I would suggest adding is setting something like a 20% of total points limit on any single item instead of active points or dice limits, to better reflect the optimization and specialization focus of this game.
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My problem with it, for reference, was less the whole "not being able to put more points than X into a thing" thing and more "not being able to get a dice roll higher than X" through other means -- ie sealcraft like Macerators and Explosive Punching.
MadScientist said:
I do like the aspects/stunts thing.

No idea how the DF variant works, but based on a skim of the web page, let's try making Hazou! For the purposes of this exercise, I'm saying that each element as well as Sealing, Genjutsu, Medical ninjutsu, and neutral ninjutsu is it's own skill. Fight is taijutsu/close weapons. Shoot is ranged weapons. You have to know a jutsu to be able to use it, but all your jutsu of the same type will use that element's skill bonus.

Aspects
  • [UPLIFT] Hazou wants to make the world a safer and more comfortable place for humanity.
  • [I NOW DECLARE YOU MOUTH AND FOOT] Hazou has a tendency to speak before thinking.
  • [BEEN THERE, KILLED THAT] Hazou has been living in the wilderness for two years, and has experience with survivalism.
  • [I AM BECOME DEATH] Hazou has a... thing... with inventing weapons of mass destruction.
  • [FLIP IT UPSIDE DOWN] Hazou has a creative mindset that lets him see novel uses for things.
  • [LIST FOUR, PAGE ELEVEN] Hazou creates lists in a manner that sometimes strays into mental illness.
  • [KAGOME'S PRODIGY] Hazou has been trained in sealcrafting, and is described as "freakishly good" at it. Due to the uniqueness of his teacher, his approach is rather more cautious than most.
  • [THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN] After sinking a boatload of civilians, Hazou is sickened by the thought of killing more, or allowing more to die via inaction.
Stunts
  • {ROKI} If Hazou has a higher Deceive bonus than his opponent's Empathy bonus, add +2 to Fight.
  • {IMPASSIONED SPEECH} Add +2 to Rapport when delivering a speech.
  • {SEAL DOWNLOAD} Add +2 to Sealing when reverse engineering a seal.
Skills
Great:
  • Sealing
Good:
  • Deceive
  • Fight
Fair:
  • Earth Ninjutsu
  • Will
  • Empathy
Average:
  • Neutral Ninjutsu
  • Craft
  • Rapport
  • Lore
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Athletics is necessary in the same way Tac Move was, as far as I know. Otherwise looks pretty decent (with the obvious caveat of Hazou being significantly more advanced in skills than that :p)
 
MadScientist said:
I do like the aspects/stunts thing.

No idea how the DF variant works, but based on a skim of the web page, let's try making Hazou! For the purposes of this exercise, I'm saying that each element as well as Sealing, Genjutsu, Medical ninjutsu, and neutral ninjutsu is it's own skill. Fight is taijutsu/close weapons. Shoot is ranged weapons. You have to know a jutsu to be able to use it, but all your jutsu of the same type will use that element's skill bonus.
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So the big thing is, using each ninjutsu type as as own skill is NOT how Dresden Files does things. As you see, that quickly leads to skill inflation. What Dresden Files does is have things like Fire Ninjutsu be be Powers... these are things that are sort of like Stunts, but can cost multiple points of Refresh depending on how powerful they are.

So you take a Power that gives you Fire NInjutsu, which is probably the equivalent of Fire Evocation. With Fire Evocation you can make the element of Fire "do stuff". Normally attacks, but also heating rooms or burning through walls or anything you can reasonably claim fire could do. So how does Evocation work? Two skills, Discipline and Conviction. Discipline is Control and Conviction is Power... In MfD these would would likely be the skills of Chakra Control and Chakra Capacity.

First you decide what you want to do. This normally comes down to:
Attack
Block
Maneuver (Doings stuff.)
Counterspell

When you decide how many shifts of power you want to put into it. You start off at 0, and each shift does things like add to the Weapon rating of the attack (for more damage) or affect multiple targets or affect targets farther away or give yourself a greater Defense against attacks or make the effect last longer or overcome a more resistant target. (Not going to try to type out the whole multi-paragraph explanation.) For example, a Medi-nin trying to heal an injury probably needs shifts equal to the rating of the injury at least, and may need extra shifts to keep the healing going for a long period of time.

Your Conviction/Power/Chakra Capacity is the limiter for how many shifts of power you can put in. You start with shifts equal to your rating in this skill which can be modified by things like Stunts or bonuses... So a ninja with a Chakra Capacity of 3 who is Fire Natured might have a Chakra Capacity of 5 for fire jutsu. You can put more shifts into an effect than your skill rating, but this means you take mental stress for each extra shift above your limit. In MfD this might be chakra stress as well. (Yes pedants, in DF you have to take at least one box of stress no matter what.)

Then you roll Discipline/Control/Chakra Control. You have to roll a number equal to the number of shifts you were trying to generate. If you fail this roll, bad things happen. You may take stress/consequences yourself, or it may hit the environment as unintended consequences due to your screw-up.
 
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@Cariyaga, the issue with hacking the dice is that Fate's Fudge Dice are equally likely to be positive or negative (math), so adding more of them doesn't really change much. On top of that, because the dice average out to 0, even small differences in skill give a huge advantage - which is why Advantages or Aspects only give a +2, because that's still going from ~60-40 odds (as ties go to attacker) to ~90-10 for equal-skill combatants. Moving the set of dice from 2+/2=/2- to 3+/2=/1- means moving from an average roll of +0 (+/- 1) to an average roll of +2 (+/- 1), which is about as good as adding an Advantage every time you swing. Adding more modified Fudge dice would only exaggerate the advantage.

Athletics is Fate's mobility/dodge skill, yeah, pretty much the same as Tacmov was.

Regarding HERO - I'll admit I'm not very familiar, but I'm not a fan of the d20 - too damn swingy, no bell curve :sour:. On top of that, skimming the page and looking through a few powers and advantages suggests that the system's as vulnerable to exploits as the other d20 systems I've played, but with the way everything's turned up to 11 for superheros it's likely even messier (for example, Shapeshifting seems to just give you a big pile of points based on what your new form is. Like, a big pile of them. Jeez). So, not sure if it's going to save the QMs any effort keeping an eye on us trying to walk the line between clever and awesome or actually breaking things.

@Velorien, sympathy - when I ran Naruto in BESM I found it took a lot of ST intervention and tweaking, and my table was pretty munchkin-light; I suspect it sits in an unhappy medium between something rules-heavy like HERO and something rules-light like Fate when it comes to dealing with people trying to break the system :p.
 
Evocation in MfD continued....

So obviously jutsu are less free-form in MfD than in Evocation is in Dresden Files. Here is how I would do it:

To pull off a jutsu, you must learn it in advance. This ends up as a pre-built Evocation effect where you already known how many shifts of power it takes and how they will be spent. Learning a new jutus costs nothing mechanically... you merely need to have someone willing to teach it to you and have sufficient time available in game to make some rolls to learn. Or maybe not even bother with rolls? They would be written something like this:

Fireball Technique: Two shifts of power, make a Weapon 2 attack roll against a single target in the same zone. Ninja may use their Shoot skill rather than their Chakra Control skill for the Control roll.

See that last bit? Many jutsu will have odd little adders like that from how they were built during research. Things like how MEW walls become permanent rather than temporary chakra constructs if cast onto the right terrain. GMS should be generous and creative in adding odd little quirks to jutus.

Creating a jutsu takes a Chakra Lore skill and is an extended project where you must make rolls over a certain number of scenes, and if you don't get X number of shifts in Y number of attempts the entire thing fails and you don't succeed. Note that as always you can roll skills at +0. This means that many ninja are able to create very minor jutsu for their own convenience or as a signature move, especially if they bother to set up Maneuvers beforehand, but you have to be a real scholar of chakra powers to build high end stuff like Shadow Replication.

Putting Genjutsu aside for a minute as its own thing, Ninjutsu come in two types, Elemental or non-Elemental. Every ninja has at least one elemental specialty where they get bonuses to specialties of that element, both to use them and to create them, etc. Non-elemental don't benefit from that but are more flexible for effect.

You may also have a number of Signature Jutsu that do not require Discipline rolls to cast, though they may still be required for targeting or when opposed.
 
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Erolki said:
@Cariyaga, the issue with hacking the dice is that Fate's Fudge Dice are equally likely to be positive or negative (math), so adding more of them doesn't really change much. On top of that, because the dice average out to 0, even small differences in skill give a huge advantage - which is why Advantages or Aspects only give a +2, because that's still going from ~60-40 odds (as ties go to attacker) to ~90-10 for equal-skill combatants. Moving the set of dice from 2+/2=/2- to 3+/2=/1- means moving from an average roll of +0 (+/- 1) to an average roll of +2 (+/- 1), which is about as good as adding an Advantage every time you swing. Adding more modified Fudge dice would only exaggerate the advantage.
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That's the point of doing that, though? I mean, even in our old system, you'd roll a bunch of dice, it'd usually average out to around the same number when you're rolling a lot of them. Same thing'll happen here.

Same applies to chakra boosting. It's a way to interface chakra boosting with the rules of Fate. It's SUPPOSED to be as good as adding advantage, because it uses up chakra to do.
ClawClawBite said:
Hero System/Champions as from HERO Games - Homepage

Is a totally seperate system from M&M which had a ruleset called d20Hero.
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Ah. Now I just need to find a PDF or something.
 
Cariyaga said:
That's the point of doing that, though? I mean, even in our old system, you'd roll a bunch of dice, it'd usually average out to around the same number when you're rolling a lot of them. Same thing'll happen here.

Same applies to chakra boosting. It's a way to interface chakra boosting with the rules of Fate. It's SUPPOSED to be as good as adding advantage, because it uses up chakra to do.
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The problem is, not only does it push your average, middle-of-the-road roll, but it also totally skews the probabilities for good and bad rolls - you're virtually never going to get worse than +0, and you're pretty likely to get +3 or +4 (which were very rare results in base Fate) if each die has a 50% chance of giving you a +1 and only a 1/6 of giving you a -1. I'm pretty sure adding a flat number bonus (or just using Chakra as a form of gaining Advantage, if we want to keep things simple) would run much smoother.
 
Erolki said:
The problem is, not only does it push your average, middle-of-the-road roll, but it also totally skews the probabilities for good and bad rolls - you're virtually never going to get worse than +0, and you're pretty likely to get +3 or +4 (which were very rare results in base Fate) if each die has a 50% chance of giving you a +1 and only a 1/6 of giving you a -1. I'm pretty sure adding a flat number bonus (or just using Chakra as a form of gaining Advantage, if we want to keep things simple) would run much smoother.
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I'm, um... not really seeing the problem here. Why is it a bad thing if using chakra skews the probabilities for both good and bad rolls?
 
Mostly that it's too powerful, especially for something that all ninja are capable of doing, and it means ninja using Chakra rarely screw up (which doesn't seem right - it makes you more powerful and faster, sure, but not quicker-thinking or more coordinated). Using it for Iron Nerve makes a little more sense (avoiding screwing up and disproportionately getting good physical results is kinda its thing), but that isn't really how it's been presented to work in combat (given exactly reproducing previous motions is less useful when your opponent isn't doing the same). Thus, Roki happened (and I've seen a couple different Stunts written up for Roki, all of which I liked).

On top of the math issues, I'll admit some of my objection is that it seems inelegant - that we can accomplish effects that give similar advantages to the characters that are simpler and easier to balance. One of the reasons I think Fate is a good pick for this is that it's straightforward and elegant in execution, which means it takes less work to run and balance things in. Yes, lots of stuff gets abstracted to a Advantage or Aspect for a +2, but no system covers everything - there will always be stuff that doesn't fit, especially in a setting that has such flexible superpowers and advantage-seeking PCs. Saying "This helps you, so we can just run it as an Advantage" works fairly for most edge cases and situational bonuses, and we can write custom equipment rules and the like for anything we use a lot that doesn't fit in that (which we'd have to do in most systems, given how niche some of the stuff the Hivemind's come up is ;)).

(Sadly, I don't know much about Champions, and thus can't really comment on it. I look forward to learning more through the Interludes :))
 
Erolki said:
Mostly that it's too powerful, especially for something that all ninja are capable of doing, and it means ninja using Chakra rarely screw up (which doesn't seem right - it makes you more powerful and faster, sure, but not quicker-thinking or more coordinated). Using it for Iron Nerve makes a little more sense (avoiding screwing up and disproportionately getting good physical results is kinda its thing), but that isn't really how it's been presented to work in combat (given exactly reproducing previous motions is less useful when your opponent isn't doing the same). Thus, Roki happened (and I've seen a couple different Stunts written up for Roki, all of which I liked).

On top of the math issues, I'll admit some of my objection is that it seems inelegant - that we can accomplish effects that give similar advantages to the characters that are simpler and easier to balance. One of the reasons I think Fate is a good pick for this is that it's straightforward and elegant in execution, which means it takes less work to run and balance things in. Yes, lots of stuff gets abstracted to a Advantage or Aspect for a +2, but no system covers everything - there will always be stuff that doesn't fit, especially in a setting that has such flexible superpowers and advantage-seeking PCs. Saying "This helps you, so we can just run it as an Advantage" works fairly for most edge cases and situational bonuses, and we can write custom equipment rules and the like for anything we use a lot that doesn't fit in that (which we'd have to do in most systems, given how niche some of the stuff the Hivemind's come up is ;)).

(Sadly, I don't know much about Champions, and thus can't really comment on it. I look forward to learning more through the Interludes :))
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Well, the thing is, this change is couched in the context of also importing over the old skill numbers, and increasing the number of dice rolled accordingly to keep it impactful.

So, let's say that you get +1 Fudge die per, say 5 points in a skill, round down. Hazou's got 32 in Taijutsu, so he'll be getting 4 + (floor(32/5)), or 10 fudge dice in total. Someone with higher skill would get more fudge dice.

So, in that context, he would be getting somewhere between 42 and 22, getting an average of 35.3, with a high amount of upward variance and a low amount of downward variance, as compared with a strict average of 32 when not chakra boosting, with equal variance upwards and downwards.

Actually, now that I think of it, it might work better if the system was changed to d12-based rather than d6... hm. In any case, you do have a point, I'm just trying to shoehorn in decent chakra boosting mechanics that aren't a simple +2 because that's kind of boring to me, and seems overpowerful as a mechanic to rely on in a world of characters as intelligent as each other on average.

That said:

Erolki said:
Mostly that it's too powerful, especially for something that all ninja are capable of doing, and it means ninja using Chakra rarely screw up (which doesn't seem right - it makes you more powerful and faster, sure, but not quicker-thinking or more coordinated). Using it for Iron Nerve makes a little more sense (avoiding screwing up and disproportionately getting good physical results is kinda its thing), but that isn't really how it's been presented to work in combat (given exactly reproducing previous motions is less useful when your opponent isn't doing the same). Thus, Roki happened (and I've seen a couple different Stunts written up for Roki, all of which I liked).
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eaglejarl said:
The world seemed to slow around Hazou. Everything became calm and quiet, lines tracing through the world around him, showing all the paths down which the Iron Nerve could take him. With every furious step thousands of the paths vanished, no longer reachable through any combination of skill or strength. He looked down the path he'd chosen and was satisfied; he would slip past Bosatsu with a whisker to spare and be able to engage Ken, the ninjutsu user. From what Hazou had observed, Ken would be no match for him in close combat. Hazou should be able to crush him in one pass, then turn to deal with Bosatsu one-on-one. Possibly even two-on-one if Akane would mix in. She wasn't at their level, but she could be a useful distraction while Hazou took Bosatsu down. They'd need to be fast, though; the third teammate, Mirai, was just out of sight in the trees guarding Noburi and Keiko. She'd show up in seconds, but there should be just enough time to—
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It does indeed seem to make you think faster.
 
Cariyaga said:
[Chakra boost] does indeed seem to make you think faster.
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It's not a thing that's been discussed among the QMs but my personal headcanon is that it accelerates your brain just enough that you can keep up with your accelerate body. It doesn't make you smarter and it only lasts a few seconds regardless of how much chakra you pump in, so it's not going to be useful for anything aside from punching.
 
eaglejarl said:
It's not a thing that's been discussed among the QMs but my personal headcanon is that it accelerates your brain just enough that you can keep up with your accelerate body. It doesn't make you smarter and it only lasts a few seconds regardless of how much chakra you pump in, so it's not going to be useful for anything aside from punching.
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At least unless you have access to a near-unlimitted source of it... glances in the direction of Naruto

e: You know, I wonder how long it would take us to break this world over our collective knees if we had access to Naruto.
 
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Interlude (Omake?): Chosen for the Grave
  • Sidestory
    • Interlude (Omake?): Chosen for the Grave​

    "Rejoice, mortals! I have come to grant your fondest Wish!"

    I blinked, Oli gaped, and Val said "Wishes."

    The glowing red shadow-demon-thing lowered its arms, looking a little confused. "What?"

    "Wishes," Val repeated, sipping his Earl Grey (tea, hot). "You said 'mortals', plural, so it should be 'wishes', plural. Number needs to agree."

    "Well, he could be cheaping out," Oli said helpfully. "Maybe he's only granting one wish for the three of us?"

    "Guys," I said, eyeing the demon monster carefully. "Bit of a tangent here, yes? Perhaps we should not isspay offway ethay onstermay with grammatical pedantry?"

    "It's not pedantry," Val said waspishly. "Grammar is important."

    "Um, actually..." Oli said, seeming to catch up with the moment, "...I'm with Earl on this one. Better things to focus on." He smiled that cheerful smile that tended to calm everyone in the room and extended a piece of breakfast toward the demon. "Scone?"

    The demon was so black he looked like a hole in the world, twelve feet tall, rimmed in sorcerous flames, and shaped something like a multi-way cross between a gorrila, a badger, and a post-tequila nightmare. He (I was quite certain of that, given the absence of coverings) stood motionless for three long seconds. I was pretty sure we would have seen a look of complete befuddlement on his face if we'd been able to see his face.

    "...Thanks," he eventually said, taking the scone and making it vanish into the blackness. He wasn't a neat eater; crumbs went everywhere, but at least he was polite enough to pull the flames back from his hand so he didn't fry Oli when he accepted the scone. The darkness went with it, revealing a clawed and green-scaled mitt with six fingers and two opposable thumbs.

    "Mmm, butterscotch," he said, losing the boom and reverb as he dropped down into the empty place at our table and grabbed two more scones. He shrank as he sat down, ending up only about seven feet tall and light enough that he didn't collapse the cast-iron chair. The flames winked out and the blackness flowed away, pooling at his feet like a shadow that was being cast thirty degrees off from his actual shadow. The fact that he had an actual shadow was a sign that the appearance of an otherworldly monster was only the second most surprising thing to happen today: the sun was out. In England. Val's patio rarely saw use so we were taking advantage of the opportunity.

    Oli and I were in town for the week, coming to visit our far-off friend and co-author. The plan was socializing, games, and perhaps a bit of plotting how to make the players cry giant tears of weepy salt the next few chapters of our Chosen for the Grave quest on EnoughSpeed.com. Nowhere on the schedule was "breakfast with shadow demon" listed.

    "So," I said, after giving our new tablemate a moment to inhale half the muffins, "got a name?"

    "Filo'monab'onesplitemanslau—"

    "Good to meet you, Phil," I said quickly. "Nice weather, huh?"

    "Yeah," he said, shoving another muffin in his fanged gob and speaking around the resulting mouthful of mashed-up banana nut. "Weird for England this time of year."

    "Yep." I looked at Val and Oli. My supply of calm was beginning to run out.

    "You said something about wishes?" Oli asked hopefully.

    "Oh, right," the monster said. He grabbed the pitcher of fresh-squeezed OJ and guzzled it down, then wiped his lips on the back of his hand with a satisfied 'aaaaah'. "Yep. Going to portal you guys into your game."

    We digested that for a moment.

    "We actually have plans for the day..." Val said.

    "Any chance of a delay?" I asked hopefully. "Tuesday would really be better. Any Tuesday in 2117, really." I did not want to go to a fantasy world that had a remarkable shortage of running water and toilet paper but an abundant oversupply of things that wanted to eat me.

    "No! You shall depart today! The call to battle awaits! You shall depart on your heroic journey on the nonce buuuuurrrrpppp." He covered his mouth, looking embarrassed. "Excuse me. Orange juice always does that to me."

    I glanced towards the patio door, wondering what our chances were in a sprint.

    "Do we get cool powers?" Oli asked excitedly.

    Phil pushed himself to his feet, swelling back to his original size. His shadow once again engulfed him and the flame aura leapt forth from his body. "Of course! Puny mortals, know you not your own desires? A Wish shall grant you power in accord with the nature of your soul and the desires of your heart!"

    I decided to skip over that whole 'antitheist, so no soul' part and just reflect on all the potential ways that the desires of my heart becoming reality could be a bad thing. They were surprisingly numerous, actually. I mean, it depended on what you meant by 'desires of the heart'...did that include minor passing fancies, or just life-long burning passions? Was it only my current burning passions, or did all the ones I'd ever have count—I really didn't want to end up married to Kelly LeBrock, no matter how infatuated my teenage self had been after watching Weird Science for the thirty-seventh time. I mean, I'm sure she was a very nice woman, but she was quite a bit older than me and she married Steven Seagal at one point. Granted, he was fat and slow now, but still....

    The universe split open into an oval of light that shimmered and rippled and hurt to look at.

    "Go on," the demon said, shooing us in. "Off you go!"

    "I'm really not comfortable with this," I said, not moving.

    The blackness pulled back from his face so he could glower at me. Given the number of fangs, it was a really good glower. "Stop whining and get in there," he said peevishly. He startled slightly as though he'd just remembered something. "I mean: stop whining and get in there! Go forth, mortals, and join the quest!" He grabbed me, too fast to dodge, and hurled me through the oval. Being the brave and fearless heroic type that I am, I absolutely did not scream as I passed through. I did grunt a bit when Val and Oli landed on me. "Enjoy yourselves! I'll pick you up in a year!" There was a faint click and the light from the portal winked out.

    I tried to push Oli and Val off but had to stop when a headache like a railroad spike smashed me between the eyes. For a brief moment the world vanished in a wave of pain as burning symbols rammed themselves into my brain. The two giant lumps of you-are-not-my-friend-until-you-stop-crushing-me groaned in simultaneous agony, so at least they were suffering too.

    After an eternity (or maybe just a couple seconds), it stopped and they became my friends again by rolling off of me so that I could breathe.

    "Ow." What? You try being witty in those circumstances.

    "Oh, cool!" Oli said, springing to his feet with a youthful energy and lack of creaky knees that made me want to thwap him. Fortunately, that apparently was not a desire of my heart, because my arm remained on the stone floor instead of dragging me to my feet and committing inappropriate physical violence on a nice guy who would understand my pain in another twenty years or so and that actually helped in a weird and petty sort of way because apparently I was a terrible person.

    I pushed the thought away with some effort, pushed myself to my feet with a groan, and looked around. Small round room, maybe eight feet across and eight feet high. Flagstone floor, lit by flickering torches whose smoke vanished inches from the ceiling instead of blackening the stone or filling the room with choking death. Bare stone walls with four inset arches, each of which had a label over it. The one we'd come through said 'Borington', which seemed a little rude. The one to our left said 'Flobovia', which I thought was an intensely stupid name. The one to our right said 'Shining Down the Dimness' and the one in front of us—the one with the glowing portal in it—said 'Chosen for the Grave'. Three backpacks with our names on them leaned conspicuously up against the wall beside the shimmering golden portal. I couldn't see through this one any more than I had been able to see through the first, so I had no idea where it would be dropping us.

    "Whoa," Val said. "I know ninjutsu." He paused, eyes going distant. His hand twitched as though flicking through invisible pages. "Wow. There's a lot here. 10 Hit Punch, 100 Metre Punch"—I could actually hear the British spelling in his voice—"100% Single Punch, 1000 Metre Punch, 16 Hit Combo, Absolute: Fang Passing Fang, Accelerated Armed Revolving Heaven, Acid Permeation...my god, this is every ninjutsu ever used in any Naruto material." He grimaced as though he'd just bit a whole wagonload of lemons. "Ugh. Including filler and that video game." A nun looking at the Whore of Babylon could not have seemed more disapproving.

    I eyed him suspiciously for a moment. Was he seriously objecting to great cosmic power simply because it came with chakra ostriches?

    "Yeah, well, I know fūinjutsu," I grumbled. "Ten of them, to be exact. Lame. Oli, what did you get?"

    Oli completely ignored me. "Oooooooh, neat," he murmured, poking at the air like a crazy person. "Let's see, Strength 5, Dex 5...no no no, that won't do." He started tapping on things I couldn't see.

    "Oli?"

    "Chakra zero?" he mumbled. "I don't think so!" He swiped his finger left to right.

    "Oli."

    "Hm...Mental Defense? Not sure what that would work against, but might as well...." Tap, tap, slide.

    "OLI!"

    "Huh?" he said, jolting out of his crazy person impersonation. "What?"

    "What powers did you get?" I asked patiently.

    "Character sheets!" he said, waving towards thin air with the grin of a kid who had just found a bike and a Red Rider BB Gun under the Christmas tree. "I can see our character sheets. They're even built using my Google Docs spreadsheet template. I can tweak them, too. Here." He made a few swipes and then tapped on a few things, and suddenly power burned through me like a friendly firesnake coiled up in my veins.

    "See?" he said happily. "I just gave you chakra!" He frowned. "Can't set it above a hundred, though. Can't set our stats above twelve either." More button taps, followed by another frown. "Hm, I don't see how to give us more powers." The sunny grin came back. "Still, I can bump up the strength of the ones we've got!" More taps, more slides.

    "Seriously?" I griped. "Val gets every ninjutsu ever, you get reality-warping spreadsheet powers, and I get ten lousy seals? And I do mean lousy. These things su...." I trailed off, frowning. I flipped through the designs that hung in my mind, branded there in firey symbols of madness and power. My eyes went wide. "Oh, fuck me," I whispered reverently, breaking out into giggles.

    "What?" Val asked.

    "Someone has a sense of humor," I said, after taking a moment to stifle the giggles, "and I'm guessing he's tall and firey. These aren't seals—well, two of them are, but the rest are pieces of seals. One of them is a power generator—if you switch it on it pulls energy out of the environment on the left side and pushes it out the right side. Another is a storage unit that accepts chakra on the left and stores it. It's got a line coming out the top that would allow it to connect to another component. There's another thing that looks at a component and retrieves the one its looking at, and another component that looks at a component and finds the one that that component is connected to. And so on." I shook my head. "It's the primitives for a LISP interpreter." I smiled. "Plus two actual seals that I expect are intended as examples."

    "Explosive tag and storage?" Oli asked, grinning like a shark.

    "Yep." I laughed. "Okay, I still think that 'every ninjutsu ever' and 'reality-warping spreadsheet powers' are bullshit, but give me a little time and I will show you the true power of this not-currently-operational seal-based programming language." I stifled the urge to break out into giggles again. "I just hope there's some paper in these." I hurried to the packs and started shuffling through the one that said 'Earl' on the back. It was big, made of heavy oilskin that would probably be fairly waterproof. Which was good, since it contained nothing except a dozen rolled-up scrolls, brushes and carefully-stoppered inkwells, and reams and reams of thick rag paper. The damn thing was so heavy it was hard to shift.

    "Yes!" I cheered. "Tons of paper, a dozen storage scrolls, and writing materials. C'mon, let's go; the sooner we find a place to hole up for a while the sooner I can finish the interpreter and acquire infinite cosmic p—become useful to the party." I shouldered the pack on and got to my feet with a grunt. It wasn't a great pack; the shoulder straps were just a pair of ropes and they cut into my flesh. The pack was so big that the bottom of it would be thumping on my tailbone with every step. Still, it would be the source of infinite cosmic power over a fantasy world, seized through the application of brains and computer science.

    Okay, fine, maybe Phil did know what he was talking about.

    Oli must have seen the discomfort my pack was causing me, because he poked the air a few times and suddenly the thing felt light as a feather. Another couple of pokes and it wasn't cutting into my shoulders anymore, either. I offered a nod of thanks and looked a question at him.

    "Strength and Physical Defense," he said, grinning like a maniac. "This is going to be awesome." He snatched his own pack up and swung it onto his shoulders. Both of us turned for the door.

    "Why are we going through now?" Val asked. "I assume there's food in the packs. Why not camp here until Earl has his interpreter ready and Oli and I have practiced a bit?"

    Oli and I traded abashed glances.

    "Just testing," I said. "Wanted to make sure that you guys were taking this seriously. Can't be too careful, after all." I slid the pack off my back and dug around inside for paper and ink. "This isn't going to be a short project, though. Based on what's been shoved into my noggin, sealing is really dangerous, so it's going to need a ton of error checking. We're probably talking a couple of weeks just for the simplest version that's usable, and then longer to create actual seals on it."

    Oli looked dismayed, but Val shrugged. "We made CftG crazy dangerous. I'm not in a hurry to risk my neck." Good old Valerian; for two years now Oli and I had tended to get overly excited about the shiny, but Val was always there to pull us back to earth like the wet bl—pragmatic and foresightful person he was. Nice to know that he'd acquired some real power, too; the people of CftG were not exactly friendly and far too many of them were chakra-fueled magic kung fu punch wizards with explosives and a bad attitude. Val was a black belt in some weird martial art I'd never heard of, but I was pretty confident that wouldn't stack up too well against professional assassins who had trained every day since they were six.

    A thought occurred to me and I started rummaging in my pack, looking through the labels on the storage scrolls.

    "What are you looking for?" Oli asked. He was sitting down, leaning against the wall a couple yards away with his pack next to him.

    "Phil said it would be the desires of our hearts," I reminded him. "If that's true then I absolutely must have— Oh, hell yeah!" I triggered the storage scroll and out popped a long, thin package. I flipped the covering back and pulled out the contents. Oli and Val started chuckling when I slapped the wide-brimmed hat on my head, straightened the feather, and twirled the rapier through a few imagined disengages and beats.

    "French musketeer hat, Spanish rapier, infinite cosmic power gained through magical computer science," I said happily. "Best. Day. Ever."

    o-o-o-o​

    The 'best day ever' lasted right up until the time that we realized there was no bathroom. Fortunately, there was a bucket in one of my storage scrolls and the portal made a convenient spot for waste disposal. I really hoped it didn't open into the Hokage's office, as spattering the God of Shinobi with fecal matter probably wouldn't make the best first impression. We were careful just to heave it through, on the theory that touching the portal with so much as a pinky might pull us in. It meant that typically some of the waste wouldn't make it through, so our little hidey-hole was pretty ripe. Still, no one said anything. Val kept himself busy firing one jutsu after another through the portal, working through them in alphabetical order. Trial and error revealed that he couldn't do some of them—the ones that required a bloodline, or a dog, or robot arms, or 'hey, check it out, I've got a demon in my tummy' levels of chakra, or whatever—but that didn't matter too much. After he exhausted his chakra reserves he would sit and wait while they refilled. I handed out paper and pens for those times; the other two started writing stories for each other to read in order to keep themselves busy while I scribbled notes to myself and muttered words of arcane and mighty power like 'car', 'cons', 'call/cc', and 'for fuck's sake, who let Lerdorf design a physics?'

    Now, the room was only eight feet across. That's not a lot of room for three people, as we all became aware over the next unknown number of days. Unknown because there was no way to keep track of time; the portal never varied so much as an iota, the torches didn't burn down, and all of our phones had been bricked the moment we came through into this 'Coat Room Between Worlds' area. (I refused to call it a 'Chamber', much less a 'Hall'.) We slept when we got hungry, ate from the stores in our packs when we got thirsty, and drank water from our canteens when we got tired.

    ...Hang on, that last bit sounded wrong. It's possible that my screws were coming a bit loose.

    Oh, right. The water. That seemed like it was going to be a problem, since the only supply we had was a one-quart canteen each. Val watched me chug the last of mine, turn it upside down in hopes of getting a few more drops, and look dismayed.

    "No worries," he said, getting to his feet. "Back in chapter 120, page 3, Tobirama Senju created water with his Suijin-Heki Suiton!"

    A massive spray of water shot out of his mouth, flooding the room instantly. I shot to my feet and snatched my pack, holding it above my head as the waters rose. All of the notes I'd had spread out on the floor around me were washed away, but I managed to keep my overall supply of writing materials unsoaked.

    The water rose up to my neck before Val managed to shut it off. Oli was treading water, Val was floating a bit, and I was glaring at my erstwhile friend and destroyer of notes.

    "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into," I growled.

    "Oops," he said.

    We held on like that for a few seconds and then the water surged out of the room through the portal, leaving us high and not even remotely dry.

    "Don't even think about trying to dry us out with some crazy 'Burn Everything to Hell and Back' jutsu," I growled.

    Val stopped making handsigns. "Of course not," he said innocently.

    Occasionally, I got to be the wet bl pragmatic and foresightful one.

    I lowered my pack to the floor and went back to work. The sooner I finished this thing the sooner we could get out of here.

    o-o-o-o​

    Oli had up-arrowed our Intelligence stats at the same time he bumped our Strength and Physical Defense. It had done wonders for my memory, so I was able to reconstruct what I'd lost pretty quickly. The extra brains probably also helped me with desk-checking my code before running it. I had known the stuff was dangerous, but the first time I accidentally turned a page of notes into a writhing and rapidly-growing tentacle monster really hammered it home.

    When the thing leaped off the page it was only about the size of my hand. It promptly tried to latch on to my face, but I snatched it away and hurled it across the tiny room with a girly shriek of terror manly battle cry.

    The monster hit the wall, bounced, and started immediately getting larger in what I was confident would not be the last 'fuck you, physics' moment of the next year. The tentacles grew fastest, stretching out towards all of us like hungry...tentacles, I guess.

    "Aaagghh! Strength down arrow, down arrow, down arrow!" Oli shouted, tapping furiously at the air. The monster's tentacles went limp and crashed to the floor, but it continued swelling larger and larger and the tentacles started to twitch upwards again. It became a close race between Oli's finger speed and the thing's rate of growth. I wasn't sure how long Oli would be able to tap the air before getting tired, and I was definitely sure that I was not getting close enough to that thing to use my rapier. Forty-four inches is very manly but not nearly long enough for this job.

    Oli must have realized that this wasn't a sustainable situation, because he promptly changed tactics. "Super powered super punt jutsu!" he yelled, doing his best Lou Groza impersonation. The creature went sailing through the portal with a shrieking yelp of surprise.

    Val and I were left staring stupidly at the portal before turning as one towards Oli.

    "'Super powered super punt jutsu'?" I asked, eyebrow raised.

    "That was not from the manga," Val said.

    Oli shrugged. "It worked?"

    I had nothing to say to that, so I went back to work on my interpreter's memory management system. That garbage wasn't going to collect itself.

    o-o-o-o​

    I lost track of how many sleeps it was before I got the thing working. I would have liked to add a few more features—it had come with a very basic continuation system, but it would have really helped to be able to install some prompt tags and maybe build a contract system. Unfortunately, Val and Oli were starting to make especially pointed comments about engineers and their rather casual attitude towards ship dates. Eventually, I gave in.

    "Fine," I grumbled. "Here, you should have these." I held out a small stack of papers to each of them. They accepted them nervously.

    "And these are...?" Val asked.

    "You know how the players made those macerator seals that shot things out real fast?" I asked.

    "Oh, cool!" Oli said. "So we can shoot things now?"

    "You remember how I gave Basukettō that blast harness?" I asked, ignoring the question. "You know, the one with all the shaped-charge explosive seals on it that could blow up anyone in any direction?"

    "Yes?" Oli said, clearly wondering where I was going with this.

    "And you remember how the players wanted to take both of those ideas and turn them into reactive armor or slow-release kinetic force seals that you could use to superleap?"

    "Yeeesssss....?" Val said, eyes narrowed.

    "Screw superleaping," I told them, grinning like a maniac. "These are variable force emitters with built-in lidar. Jetpack, reactive armor, macerator, and blast harness all in one. And since Oli was clever enough to up-arrow our Chakra Control to the point where we can emit chakra through all our tenketsu, you'll be able to manipulate them freely."

    "Sweet!" Oli said, looking at my work with an appropriate degree of admiration and respect. "How do we attach them?"

    I looked at him for a moment and deflated. "Um...I guess we'll need to find some glue?"

    Val patted me on the shoulder. "It's very clever, Earl." I'm sure he was trying to be reassuring. Val didn't really do condescending or patronizing. It was definitely intended to be reassuring.

    "Come on, let's get this over with," I grumbled, swinging my pack up and buckling on my rapier. I made sure my hat was firmly seated on my head and tipped at a jaunty angle, feather smoothed into a dapper curve. Then I marched through the portal.

    The others followed on my heels as we set off on our great adventure in the ninja deathworld of Chosen for the Grave!



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  • Sidestory
    • eaglejarl said:
    "Someone has a sense of humor," I said, after taking a moment to stifle the giggles, "and I'm guessing he's tall and firey. These aren't seals—well, two of them are, but the rest are pieces of seals. One of them is a power generator—if you switch it on it pulls energy out of the environment on the left side and pushes it out the right side. Another is a storage unit that accepts chakra on the left and stores it. It's got a line coming out the top that would allow it to connect to another component. There's another thing that looks at a component and retrieves the one its looking at, and another component that looks at a component and finds the one that that component is connected to. And so on." I shook my head. "It's the primitives for a LISP interpreter." I smiled. "Plus two actual seals that I expect are intended as examples."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Modular Sealing confirmed!

    eaglejarl said:
    Still, it would be the source of infinite cosmic power over a fantasy world, seized through the application of brains and computer science.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Aww, @eaglejarl, you're a man after my own heart. <3

    eaglejarl said:
    I scribbled notes to myself and muttered words of arcane and mighty power like 'car', 'cons', 'call/cc', and 'for fucks sake, who let Lerdorf design a physics?'
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Ok, no. That's my shtick. :mad: You have gone too far @eaglejarl!

    Also, where's 'cdr'?

    Edit: Also seriously? Your deepest desires are in lisp!? At least use something with static type checking. Hell, you should probably bootstrap to a theorem prover so that you can formally verify your code. It's actually pretty straightforward if you remember how to convert Boolean formulae to 3-SAT.
     
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